By Shiv Kamaraju
Twitterheads - Adapted from the Twiterrific Twitter Bird
OK, it started with email, and then we had Instant Messaging, then Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. It is bad enough that people know who your friends are, where you went to school, where you have worked and what your Top 10 pet peeves are, but to let them constantly know what you are doing and where you are is probably just taking it over the top. Welcome to Twitter.
For the uninitiated, here is how it works: In 140 characters or less you are supposed to answer the question (or “tweet”): “What are you doing?”. it’s that simple. You can choose whose tweets you want to listen to and read their tweets. So in effect you are following other users and users who follow you become your “followers”. All tweets from people you are following are posted in one single-threaded timeline. Twitter is used to communicate ideas, news and just plain gossip, thereby giving it a broadcast quality and this has been termed “micro-blogging”, where each tweet can be can be considered a very small blog post. Of course like any other social network, Twitter has its own social etiquette. There are twitter snobs and there are twitter superstars. And yes, if you have a large number of followers but do not follow enough people, it is considered rude. Watch your ratio. If on the other hand you follow many users but have too few followers, you might just be a spammer. Google the phrase “Twitter Etiquette” and you will get about 600,000+ search results. Twitter can be accessed directly from the Twitter.com website or from a barrage of other applications from your phone or mobile device, thanks to the API twitter provides to developers.
So now the question is “What can I do on Twitter that I could not do before I had Twitter?”. This question can be answered in probably a thousand different ways, depending on who you ask. You can incessantly tweet about your day to day chores, pass-on jokes, ask for restaurant suggestions in an unfamiliar part of town, send news links, announce your new personal blog, find out where the next celebrity sighting might occur, even find a date. The first report of the airplane landing on the Hudson was from an user on Twitter, it has helped raise millions for charity, and helped mobilize crowds to protest against an unpopular government in Moldova . News organization use Twitter to broadcast breaking news.
There is also an increasing trend among enterprises to use incorporate Twitter into their business and operational strategy. Businesses have been using Twitter to communicate directly with their customers, answer questions and announce new products. Search tools like search.twitter.com and twhirl are being used by companies to gather feedback and possible early warnings about their products. A lot of discussion has been put into why Twitter lacks a clear business model. Instead of seeming to build a business, Twitter is building its solid user base. But do not kid yourself into thinking that there is no business model. Twitter’s value does not lie in who is using it, but in what they are saying- the content. It is estimated to have close to 6 million tweets every day and is growing. While the clientele is increasing, Twitter’s content seems to be a unending source of comments, news, ideas, and opinions which companies would not hesitate to pay big money for. Government and media can analyze this data to gather public opinion. Combine this with the power of online advertising and you might be talking about a Google –Twitter collaboration or acquisition. (Though there have been many reports nothing has been confirmed at the time of this writing.)
So while you might be constantly annoyed by almost every news channel or media outlet dedicating time on their shows to talk about their Twitter exploits, and while you may not care about knowing what Demi and Ashton are up to this weekend, and you imagine how anyone with a steady job has time to Tweet, you are appalled by congressmen twittering while the president is delivering his address to a joint session of the house, remember this: Someone, somewhere is interested in what you are saying and there is good money to be made in analyzing what a group of people are saying. What we do and say online matters and there is a whole section of the global economy very interested in what we say and do online. So shut up and Twitter. Just think of it in terms of your way to contribute to the economy. If nothing else, it is the patriotic thing to do! And once you rescue the economy you can do back to focusing on protecting your identity. Our online profiles on Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn provide enough personal data to the rest of the world, and now twitter might just give them a peak into our consciousness.
So twitter away my friends, or not. It is not what Twitter is that matters, it is what you make of it.
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Very informative interview with the founders of Twitter: Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1460879066?bctid=1612511173
